Get 500,000 points on Marathon.

Achievement Guide for Marathon Platinum Medal

Achievement won on 29 May 16TA Score for this game: 2,022
Posted on 29 May 16 at 14:55, Edited on 29 May 16 at 14:57

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I've seen various theories about the best way to go about this, but let me explain what worked for me:

Some folks have said to begin at a later Start Level (like 6 or 7) and with a higher Fill Start, because the later the level you start in, the more points you'll get right off the bat. If you feel comfortable with the game starting that quickly, by all means go for it, but personally I was struggling with this.

What I did was began at Start Level 1 with a Fill Start of 0. In the beginning, I concentrated on getting NOTHING but Tetrises, which I did by filling up the grid completely except for one long vertical line on the side. I'd save my "long line" piece as long as I can, then I'd drop it in that vertical spot I left for it to get the Tetris. Keep repeating this as long as you can.

Eventually the game go so fast that I stopped concentrating on Tetrises and focused simply on eliminating lines so that I could get the grid as low as possible. Obviously, I still tried to take out multiple lines at once wherever I could, but I shifted away from trying to build Tetrises.

Now here's the tip that made all the difference for me: when it gets really fast, if you keep spinning your piece when it gets to the bottom, it won't click into place, meaning you can stop the action for a few seconds, look at the upcoming pieces, and plan your next few moves. You can even use this constant spinning action to "spider-walk" the piece across the board sometimes.

There is a bit of a risk, of course, that you'll accidentally lock the piece into a shape you didn't mean to. But I personally found that even when I made this mistake a few times, I was able to use this strategy to clear enough lines that it made up for it. This really helped me when the speed got a bit faster than I'd normally be able to control. I had never surpassed 350,000 points before trying this strategy, and then when I did, I got to 500,000 points my first try.